The current interaction methods with artificial intelligence (AI), such as keyboards, mice, and touchscreens, are insufficient for its sophisticated capabilities, creating a gap between powerful software and outdated hardware. Project Mirage, founded by Apoorv Shankar, is an experimental hub for designers and engineers focused on creating the next generation of intuitive, AI-powered hardware devices to bridge this interaction gap, making AI feel natural, seamless, and less overwhelming. Project Mirage aims to revolutionize our connection to the digital world and augment daily life. The initiative showcased novel input mechanisms at events like CES 2026, featuring two groundbreaking devices: Radiance and Shift.
Radiance: Revolutionizing Online Meetings with Intuitive AI Hardware
Radiance is a physical remote designed to streamline online meeting workflows and elevate communication, addressing frustrations with remote work. It integrates into existing digital ecosystems, offering intuitive controls:
- Dedicated Physical Buttons: For camera and microphone adjustments.
- Tactile Volume Knob: For instant volume control.
- Automated Meeting Access:
- Syncs with calendar and email.
- Features a “Join” button for one-click meeting entry.
- Identifies meeting links and can initiate calls within a 15-minute window before the start time.
- AI-Powered Communication Enhancement:
- Integrated Microphone: Delivers superior audio clarity compared to typical laptop microphones.
- Voice Modulation Button: Utilizes Eleven Labs’ AI technology to subtly adjust voice to sound more upbeat and engaging, refining delivery and ensuring enthusiasm is effectively conveyed.
- AI-Powered Note-Taking:
- Transcribes discussions in real-time.
- Automatically generates concise summaries upon conclusion, allowing full engagement in dialogue.
Radiance represents a significant leap in workflow efficiency and communication for professionals.
Shift: Mastering Daily Tasks with Single-Tap AI Convenience
Shift is a reprogrammable, single-tap agentic button designed to dramatically streamline repetitive daily tasks across applications like Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart, reducing cognitive load and enhancing convenience.
- Functionality: Enables booking regular rides, ordering favorite meals, or restocking groceries with a single tap, eliminating the need to navigate multiple screens or confirm details.
- AI Integration: Leverages OpenAI’s Large Language Models (LLMs) to understand and execute complex commands.
- Users can program Shift with commands like “order my usual Uber to the office” or “get my standard DoorDash order.”
- The underlying AI, working with iOS, translates a single tap into a precise sequence of actions within the specified app, automating the entire process.
- User Experience: Transforms multi-step processes into single, intuitive actions, redefining the user experience for habitual tasks.
- Development Approach: Currently supports a focused, expanding number of applications, reflecting a meticulous development approach for robust performance.
- Adaptability: Learns and adapts to individual user preferences, with its agentic nature enabling prediction of user intent for personalized and effective single-tap actions. It acts as a smart agent embedded within a physical button.
Beyond the Tangible: Project Mirage’s “Dune” Concept and the Philosophy of Future HCI
Project Mirage’s explorations extend to conceptual territories, including “Dune,” a concept device designed to modernize workflows with entirely new input mechanisms. This signals an expansive vision for evolving human-computer interaction beyond conventional paradigms and prompts a philosophical inquiry into humanity’s relationship with advanced computation.
Contrast with Frank Herbert’s Dune Universe
- Butlerian Jihad: A crusade against “thinking machines” led to a ban on AI and advanced computers.
- Mentats: Individuals rigorously trained from a young age to become “human computers,” achieving supreme accomplishments of logic, memory, and analytical prowess. They process vast data, analyze probabilities, and devise intricate strategies, integrating human cognitive abilities, memory, and perception for “supralogical hypothesizing.” Examples include Thufir Hawat.
Juxtaposition and HCI Crossroads
- Project Mirage: Embraces AI integration into hardware (Radiance, Shift) to make technology intuitive and powerful, augmenting existing capabilities and streamlining workflows. The goal is to make adapting to AI feel natural, seamless, and less overwhelming, with technology as a symbiotic extension of ourselves.
- Dune Universe: Proposes augmentation through biological and mental discipline, devoid of artificial intelligence.
This contrast raises questions about the line between human and machine interaction: is the ultimate interface external hardware or the refinement of inherent human capabilities? Project Mirage’s conceptual “Dune” device and its tangible innovations seek to answer this by developing hardware for seamless, thought-driven interaction with advanced AI, aiming for a harmonious blend of human intuition and artificial intelligence, avoiding the cautionary tale of the Butlerian Jihad.
The Broader Impact: Shaping the Future of Human-AI Collaboration
Project Mirage, through Radiance, Shift, and conceptual explorations like “Dune,” challenges perceptions of human-computer interaction. The initiative emphasizes a user-centric design philosophy, moving beyond providing tools to crafting experiences that anticipate and fulfill human needs.
- Accessibility of AI: Project Mirage’s interfaces make complex AI operations feel simple and accessible by adapting intelligently to the user, rather than requiring users to adapt to AI’s complexities.
- Agentic Approach: Hardware anticipates needs and executes multi-step commands with single, intuitive interactions, representing an evolution from past direct manipulation paradigms. This empowers users with intelligent extensions of their will.
- Growing Demand: As AI advances, the demand for physical interfaces that intuitively harness its power will increase.
- Proactive Hardware: Project Mirage is at the forefront, experimenting with hardware that is proactive and a genuine collaborator, not just reactive.
- Seamless Integration: Their work signals a future where physical and digital worlds merge more seamlessly, with technology becoming an almost invisible yet impactful part of daily life.
- Continuous Innovation: The development of unrevealed interfaces indicates Project Mirage’s commitment to continuous innovation and expanding their visionary scope for next-generation HCI.
Conclusion: Pioneering a Seamless Future for Human-Computer Interaction
Project Mirage is a beacon of innovation, crafting groundbreaking interfaces like Radiance and Shift and exploring visionary concepts like “Dune.” This work solves immediate user frustrations and lays the groundwork for a radically different future of human-computer interaction. These AI-powered hardware devices humanize technology, making artificial intelligence a natural, unobtrusive, and powerful ally in personal and professional lives.
The Project Mirage human-computer interfaces are setting a new standard for intuitive, intelligent, and engaging interaction, transforming online meetings and streamlining daily errands. Project Mirage’s visionary work reminds us that impactful technological advancements stem from reimagining the very nature of our interaction with the digital realm.
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